Radio waves carry both energy and information simultaneously. Nevertheless, radio-frequency (RF) transmissions of these quantities have traditionally been treated separately. Currently, the community is experiencing a paradigm shift in wireless network design, namely, unifying wireless transmission of information and power so as to make the best use of the RF spectrum and radiation as well as the network infrastructure for the dual purpose of communicating and energizing. In this paper, we review and discuss recent progress in laying the foundations of the envisioned dual purpose networks by establishing a signal theory and design for wireless information and power transmission (WIPT) and identifying the fundamental tradeoff between conveying information and power wirelessly. We start with an overview of WIPT challenges and technologies, namely, simultaneous WIPT (SWIPT), wirelessly powered communication networks (WPCNs), and wirelessly powered backscatter communication (WPBC). We then characterize energy harvesters and show how WIPT signal and system designs crucially revolve around the underlying energy harvester model. To that end, we highlight three different energy harvester models, namely, one linear model and two nonlinear models, and show how WIPT designs differ for each of them in single-user and multi-user deployments. Topics discussed include rate-energy region characterization, transmitter and receiver architectures, waveform design, modulation, beamforming and input distribution optimizations, resource allocation, and RF spectrum use. We discuss and check the validity of the different energy harvester models and the resulting signal theory and design based on circuit simulations, prototyping, and experimentation. We also point out numerous directions that are promising for future research.

Fundamentals of Wireless Information and Power Transfer: From RF Energy Harvester Models to Signal and System Designs

Mobile communications have been undergoing a generational change every ten years or so. However, the time difference between the so-called “G’s” is also decreasing. While fifth-generation (5G) systems are becoming a commercial reality, there is already significant interest in systems beyond 5G, which we refer to as the sixth generation (6G) of wireless systems. In contrast to the already published papers on the topic, we take a top-down approach to 6G. More precisely, we present a holistic discussion of 6G systems beginning with lifestyle and societal changes driving the need for next-generation networks. This is followed by a discussion into the technical requirements needed to enable 6G applications, based on which we dissect key challenges and possibilities for practically realizable system solutions across all layers of the Open Systems Interconnection stack (i.e., from applications to the physical layer). Since many of the 6G applications will need access to an order-of-magnitude more spectrum, utilization of frequencies between 100 GHz and 1 THz becomes of paramount importance. As such, the 6G ecosystem will feature a diverse range of frequency bands, ranging from below 6 GHz up to 1 THz. We comprehensively characterize the limitations that must be overcome to realize working systems in these bands and provide a unique perspective on the physical and higher layer challenges relating to the design of next-generation core networks, new modulation and coding methods, novel multiple-access techniques, antenna arrays, wave propagation, radio frequency transceiver design, and real-time signal processing. We rigorously discuss the fundamental changes required in the core networks of the future, such as the redesign or significant reduction of the transport architecture that serves as a major source of latency for time-sensitive applications. This is in sharp contrast to the present hierarchical network architectures that are not suitable to realize many of the anticipated 6G services. While evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of key candidate 6G technologies, we differentiate what may be practically achievable over the next decade, relative to what is possible in theory. Keeping this in mind, we present concrete research challenges for each of the discussed system aspects, providing inspiration for what follows.

6G Wireless Systems: Vision, Requirements, Challenges, Insights, and Opportunities

MIMO processing plays a central part in the recent increase in spectral and energy efficiencies of wireless networks. MIMO has grown beyond the original point-to-point channel and nowadays refers to a diverse range of centralized and distributed deployments. The fundamental bottleneck toward enormous spectral and energy efficiency benefits in multiuser MIMO networks lies in a huge demand for accurate CSIT. This has become increasingly difficult to satisfy due to the increasing number of antennas and access points in next generation wireless networks relying on dense heterogeneous networks and transmitters equipped with a large number of antennas. CSIT inaccuracy results in a multi-user interference problem that is the primary bottleneck of MIMO wireless networks. Looking backward, the problem has been to strive to apply techniques designed for perfect CSIT to scenarios with imperfect CSIT. In this article, we depart from this conventional approach and introduce readers to a promising strategy based on rate-splitting. Rate-splitting relies on the transmission of common and private messages, and is shown to provide significant benefits in terms of spectral and energy efficiencies, reliability, and CSI feedback overhead reduction over conventional strategies used in LTE-A and exclusively relying on private message transmissions. Open problems, the impact on standard specifications, and operational challenges are also discussed.

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Rate splitting for MIMO wireless networks: a promising PHY-layer strategy for LTE evolution

This paper considers the sum-rate (SR) maximization problem in downlink multi-user multiple input simgle output (MU-MISO) systems under imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). Contrary to existing works, we consider a rather unorthodox transmission scheme. In particular, the message intended to one of the users is split into two parts: a common part which can be recovered by all users, and a private part recovered by the corresponding user. On the other hand, the rest of users receive their information through private messages. This rate-splitting (RS) approach was shown to boost the achievable degrees of freedom when CSIT errors decay with increased SNR. In this paper, the RS strategy is married with linear precoder design and optimization techniques to achieve a maximized ergodic SR (ESR) performance over the entire range of SNRs. Precoders are designed based on partial CSIT knowledge by solving a stochastic rate optimization problem using means of sample average approximation coupled with the weighted minimum mean square error approach. Numerical results show that in addition to the ESR gains, the benefits of RS also include relaxed CSIT quality requirements and enhanced achievable rate regions compared with conventional transmission with no rate-splitting.

Sum-Rate Maximization for Linearly Precoded Downlink Multiuser MISO Systems With Partial CSIT: A Rate-Splitting Approach

Considering a two-user multi-antenna Broadcast Channel, this letter shows that linearly precoded Rate-Splitting (RS) with Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) receivers is a flexible framework for non-orthogonal transmission that generalizes, and subsumes as special cases, four seemingly different strategies, namely Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) based on linear precoding, Orthogonal Multiple Access (OMA), Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) based on linearly precoded superposition coding with SIC, and physical-layer multicasting. This letter studies the sum-rate and shows analytically how RS unifies, outperforms, and specializes to SDMA, OMA, NOMA, and multicasting as a function of the disparity of the channel strengths and the angle between the user channel directions.

Rate-Splitting Unifying SDMA, OMA, NOMA, and Multicasting in MISO Broadcast Channel: A Simple Two-User Rate Analysis

To enhance the multiplexing gain of two-receiver Multiple-Input-Single-Output Broadcast Channel with imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT), a class of Rate-Splitting (RS) approaches has been proposed recently, which divides one receiver's message into a common and a private part, and superposes the common message on top of Zero-Forcing precoded private messages. In this paper, with quantized CSIT, we study the ergodic sum rate of two schemes, namely RS-S and RS-ST, where the common message(s) are transmitted via a space and space-time design, respectively. Firstly, we upper-bound the sum rate loss incurred by each scheme relative to Zero-Forcing Beamforming (ZFBF) with perfect CSIT. Secondly, we show that, to maintain a constant sum rate loss, RS-S scheme enables a feedback overhead reduction over ZFBF with quantized CSIT. Such reduction scales logarithmically with the constant rate loss at high Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (SNR). We also find that, compared to RS-S scheme, RS-ST scheme offers a further feedback overhead reduction that scales with the discrepancy between the feedback overhead employed by the two receivers when there are alternating receiver-specific feedback qualities. Finally, simulation results show that both schemes offer a significant SNR gain over conventional single-user/multiuser mode switching when the feedback overhead is fixed.

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Rate Analysis of Two-Receiver MISO Broadcast Channel With Finite Rate Feedback: A Rate-Splitting Approach

Recently, the Degrees-of-Freedom (DoFs) region of multiple-input-single-output (MISO) networks with imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) has attracted significant attention. An achievable scheme, known as rate-splitting (RS), integrates common-message-multicasting and private-message-unicasting. In this paper, focusing on the general $K$ -cell MISO IC with an arbitrary CSIT quality of each interfering link, we first identify the DoF region achieved by RS. Second, we introduce a novel scheme, so called topological RS (TRS), whose novelties compared with RS lie in a multi-layer structure and in transmitting multiple common messages to be decoded by groups of users rather than all users. The design of TRS is motivated by a novel interpretation of the $K$ -cell IC with imperfect CSIT as a weighted sum of a series of partially connected networks. We show that the DoF region achieved by TRS yields the best known result so far, and we find the maximal sum DoF via hypergraph fractional packing. Finally, for a realistic scenario where each user is connected to three dominant transmitters, we identify the sufficient condition where TRS strictly outperforms conventional schemes, and show that TRS is optimal for some CSIT qualities.

MISO Networks With Imperfect CSIT: A Topological Rate-Splitting Approach

Rate Analysis of Two-Receiver MISO Broadcast Channel with Finite Rate Feedback: A Rate-Splitting Approach

We focus on a two-receiver multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO), broadcast channel (BC), and interference channel (IC) with an arbitrary number of antennas at each node. We assume an imperfect knowledge of local channel state information at the transmitters, whose error decays with the signal-to-noise-ratio. With such configuration, we characterize the achievable degrees-of-freedom (DoF) regions in both BC and IC, by proposing a rate-splitting (RS) approach, which divides each receiver’s message into a common part and a private part. Compared with the RS scheme designed for the symmetric MIMO case, the novelties of the proposed block lie in: 1) delivering additional non-ZF-precoded private symbols to the receiver with the greater number of antennas and 2) a space-time implementation. These features provide more flexibilities in balancing the common-message-decodabilities at the two receivers, and fully exploit asymmetric antenna arrays. Besides, in IC, we modify the power allocation designed for the asymmetric BC based on the signal space, where the two transmitted signals interfere with each other. We also derive an outer-bound for the DoF regions and show that the proposed achievable DoF regions are optimal under some antenna configurations and channel state information at the transmitter side qualities.

/pdf/achievable-dof-regions-of-mimo-networks-with-imperfect-csit-27npspaofe.pdf

Chenxi Hao

Papers

Rate splitting for MIMO wireless networks: a promising PHY-layer strategy for LTE evolution

Rate Analysis of Two-Receiver MISO Broadcast Channel With Finite Rate Feedback: A Rate-Splitting Approach

MISO Networks With Imperfect CSIT: A Topological Rate-Splitting Approach

Rate Analysis of Two-Receiver MISO Broadcast Channel with Finite Rate Feedback: A Rate-Splitting Approach

Achievable DoF Regions of MIMO Networks With Imperfect CSIT